The Tao of Anarchy: There is no God. There is no State. They are all superstitions that are established by the power-hunger psychopaths to divide, rule, and enslave us. It's only you and me, we are all true and real existence though in one short life. That is, We all are capable to freely interact with one another without coercion from anyone. We all are capable to take self-responsibility to find ways to live with one another in liberty, equality, harmony, and happiness before leaving this world forever. We all were born free and equal among all beings on this planet. We are not imprisoned in and by a place with a political name just because we were born there by chance. We are not chained to a set of indoctrinated beliefs that have been imposed upon us by so-called traditions. This Planet is home to all of us. No one owns it. We share the benefits from and responsibility to this Earth. We pledge no oath, no allegiance to no one; submit to no authority. We are all free and equal. The only obligation we all must undertake constantly with consistency is to respect the same freedoms and rights of others.

The Real InfoWar That Must Wake You Up: You’ll Never Be Paranoid Enough

PQC: This is a very interesting investigation by Whitney Webb which consists of three parts (articles). Please find time to read them all in entirety. I do have some reservations on some of her arguments though, But She is fucking good. You guys should check her works regularly.

Anyway, I take this opportunity to emphasize some points that we all need to be clear about while navigating in the thick fog of this modern infowar.

1- Governments and big corporations have been colluding in almost every field of society. It’s worse and more powerful than Mussolini envisaged. As matter of fact it’s a hidden private group that control and run Government. Government/ the State is just their indispensable tool.

2- Wikileaks is not Whistle-blower, it is a publishing organization that receives and publishes documents from true whistle blowers or hackers who are working within governments and/or private institutions. Jullian Assange/Wikileaks can only publish what they received. Wikileaks will have nothing if no one send nothing it.

3- Thus, it’s our responsibility, especially those are investigative journalists to work out if these documents are genuine leaks or controlled leaks.

4- We must bear in mind that under the modern paradigm anyone, any group could turn out to be “their agent” one day, for THEY have an absolute advantage in financial and human resources. Whereas our strength is courage, principle, and integrity, which are rare and expensive currencies.

I myself have a few “question marks” on Sibel Edmonds and Jullian Assange too, which have been popped up from the content of their works and their modus operandi. When I gather enough info I will share with you all.

5- Keep questioning, be skeptical and analytical. Do not take anyone words for granted. My main guidance, apart from other things, is always asking CUI BONO. And this simple principle has helped me spotting out Antiwar.com , ZeroHedge.com as “their rats”

We are indeed living in a fucked up world that has been created by our stupidity and irresponsibly

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asserts Pierre Omidyar decided to create The Intercept to not only take ownership of the Snowden leaks but also to continue his blockade against WikiLeaks and create a “honey trap” for whistleblowers.

WikiLeaks, the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now, the fight to silence Wikileaks is not only being waged by powerful government figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers.

As this three-part series seeks to show, these outlets and organizations are being stealthily guided by the hands of special interests, not the public interest they claim to serve. Part I focuses on the Freedom of the Press Foundation, The Intercept, and the oligarch who has strongly influenced both organizations in his long-standing fight to silence WikiLeaks.

Mid-November, 2017 – The Daily Beast ran an exclusivereport detailing how the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was set to break ties with WikiLeaks amidst concerns among the foundation’s board, which includes such well-known figures as Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, John Cusack and Glenn Greenwald, among others. The news was confirmed less than a month later when the nonprofit’s board officially voted to stop accepting U.S. donations for WikiLeaks, which had been blacklisted for years by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal after publishing leaked U.S. government documents provided by Chelsea Manning.

Even though the FPF had been founded to allow WikiLeaks to circumvent the banking blockade — which, according to WikiLeaks, sapped nearly 95% of the transparency organization’s funds — the board’s decision to end its founding mission was unanimous.

Last Monday, the FPF made it official, severing its ties with WikiLeaks, leaving it to rely on cryptocurrencies and other esoteric means of funding in order to get around the banking blockade. Journalist Trevor Timm, the FPF’s director, told WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief Julian Assange in an email that the foundation’s reason for ending the partnership was “that the financial blockade by the major payment processors is no longer in effect, and as such, we will soon cease processing donations on behalf of WikiLeaks readers.”

“The financial censorship of WikiLeaks is ongoing in various ways, as is our litigation in response,” Assange told Timm in response, adding that:

The FPF faces criticism for receiving donations on our behalf, but that is its function. If it bows to political pressure it becomes part of the problem it was designed to solve and yet another spurious free-speech organization — of which there are plenty.”

Assange had made the exchange public by publishing it on his personal Twitter, but it has since been deleted.

Indeed, the pressure against WikiLeaks has reached fever pitch, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ calling Assange’s arrest a “priority” and CIA Director Mike Pompeo labeling it a non-state hostile intelligence service. Last Thursday, former CIA analyst and whistleblower John Kiriakou stated his belief that “the Americans want Assange’s head on a platter.” All of this has followed Wikileaks’ publication of the Podesta emails and DNC leaks in 2016 prior to that year’s U.S. presidential election, as well as its more recent publication of CIA hacking secrets in the “Vault 7” and “Vault 8” releases.

Voting WikiLeaks off the investigative island

Though Timm’s explanation seemed benign enough, WikiLeaks took to Twitter to suggest that something more nefarious was behind the board’s decision to cut ties. Once the news became public, WikiLeaks and its associated accounts linked the FPF’s decision to the fact that many of its members now work for organizations financed by eBay billionaire and PayPal owner Pierre Omidyar. In addition, the FPF itself has received large sums of money from Omidyar and his various businesses and foundations.

Today, the “Freedom of Press” Foundation, which is now substantially linked to Paypal’s Omidyar, has, after political pressure, decided to terminate processing of WikiLeaks’ donations.

WikiLeaks, in recent tweets, has suggested that Omidyar’s influence was responsible not only for the FPF’s decision but also for the unusual attacks that some FPF members have launched against WikiLeaks, particularly Assange, in recent months. The most outspoken of these members has been FPF director Micah Lee, who is employed by the Omidyar-owned publication, The Intercept.

In February of last year, Lee called Assange a “rapist, liar & ally to fascists” in a tweet — despite the fact that Assange was never charged with rape, his alleged accusers have also claimed that Assange had not sexually assaulted them, and there is abundant evidence suggesting that the rape investigation was a means of ensnaring Assange to ensure his extradition to the United States. Based on Lee’s other tweets, the “ally to fascists” charge ostensibly refers to Lee’s belief that Wikileaks’ publications of emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta was done explicitly, with Assange’s blessing, to aid the Trump campaign.

Lee has also claimed that Assange is a “Putin fanboy” who doesn’t care “about government transparency if the government in question is Russia,” even though WikiLeaks has published information damaging to the Russian government while Putin was president. Lee also intimated that Assange may have a direct relationship to the Kremlin, an outlandish claim for which there is no basis.

Lee, in other tweets, has also perpetuated the “Russiagate” conspiracy in attempts to link Assange to Trump to Putin.

The day after WL attacked the journalists, Putin himself cited WL’s conspiracy to dismiss the scandal.

“Besides,” Putin said, “we now know from WikiLeaks that officials and state agencies in the United States are behind all this.”https://t.co/N129JF5h5v

This same conspiracy theory, which has produced no concrete evidence to support its claims after more than a year, was initiated by top government officials such as the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director Michael Morell, among others.

Other members of FPF as well as some other Intercept writers (see here and here) have echoed these claims as well, attacking Assange for allegedly siding with Trump over Clinton in the 2016 election even though Assange never declared support for Trump. Ironically, many of these same journalists have themselves proven to be very partisan in their writings and on social media, undermining the claim of Lee and others that the FPF is “non-partisan.”

Sibel Edmonds, FBI whistleblower and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, told MintPress News that the FPF has a reputation for being a “very, very partisan organization and populated with ideologues.” She further asserted that the “number one reason” for the FPF’s decision was directly related to Wikileaks’ releases in 2016, namely the DNC leaks and the Podesta emails.

Edmonds added :

Assange violated their criteria and this is basically their pay-back. All of the individuals [on the FPF] are known to be ideologues, are into this game of divide and conquer. Their role is to represent the left and Julian Assange challenged this. Before the election, many of the members of this organization supported Assange. It’s important to ask why this changed over night.”

Despite the slander and demonstrably false claims, other FPF members who have historically defended WikiLeaks and Assange were silent regarding Lee’s accusations, including Glenn Greenwald, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden. Though FPF members have denied that Omidyar’s influence has had a role in these attacks, as well as in the board’s decision to cut ties with WikiLeaks, a closer examination of Omidyar and his ties to the U.S. political establishment — as well as his apparent influence on some of the FPF’s most prominent members — gives credibility to WikiLeaks’ concerns.

Omidyar’s connections and agenda

Pierre Omidyar, prior to the founding of The Intercept, was known not for any commitment to journalism or free speech but rather for his connections to the U.S. government and his role in the financial blockade of WikiLeaks that began in 2010.

Indeed, publicly available records reveal Omidyar’s close connections to the U.S. political establishment. For example, Omidyar made more visits to the Obama White House between 2009 and 2013 than did Google’s Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. He has also donated $30 million to the Clinton global initiative. He directly co-invested with the State Department, funding groups – some of them overtly fascist – that worked to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014. He continues to fund USAID, particularly its overseas program aimed at “advancing U.S. national security interests” abroad.

Omidyar has a vested interest in advancing the interests of the U.S. political establishment for a variety of reasons. Sibel Edmonds, who was among the first to note Omidyar’s background upon The Intercept’s founding, noted that the PayPal executive “has been in bed with the CIA and NSA” and even the Department of Defense — further noting that the Snowden documents that The Intercept, and thus Omidyar, controls “contain information about PayPal’s direct partnership not only with the Treasury Department but also the CIA.”

Edmonds further stated that Greenwald had confirmed Omidyar’s long-running partnership with the CIA and other government agencies on Twitter during a heated exchange between the two in 2013.

Omidyar is also well-connected to Snowden’s former employer Booz Allen Hamilton, a major government contractor known as the “world’s most profitable spy organization,” whose former executives include James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, and Michael McConnell, former Director of the NSA. Omidyar’s Ulupono Initiative, a venture capital fund that operates in his home state of Hawaii, cosponsors one of the Pentagon’s most important contractor expos, in which Booz Allen Hamilton – and the Department of Defense – have a major stake. In addition, a former Booz Allen Hamilton vice president, Kyle Datta, is General Partner of Omidyar’s Ulupono Initiative.

Also striking was Omidyar’s decision to accept Snowden’s former boss at Booz Allen Hamilton, Robert Lietzke, into the Omidyar Fellows program in 2015 after personally interviewing Lietzke as part of the program’s application process. What was unusual in Lietzke’s case was that Omidyar also oversees The Intercept, which has exclusive publishing rights over the Snowden cache – which was taken from under Lietzke’s nose at Booz Allen Hamilton by his former employee, Edward Snowden. Snowden himself has remained silent on Omidyar’s decision, despite the mixed signals it sent and continues to serve as the president of the FPF — which, as mentioned, is also funded by Omidyar.

The Intercept was founded in 2014 with some $250 million in seed money from Omidyar. Its first hires were Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the only journalists in possession of the full Snowden cache. According to former Intercept writers, Omidyar – despite funding and founding an enterprise dedicated to “fearless” and “adversarial” journalism – is “shockingly [un]interested in the actual journalism” of the paper. If this portrayal of Omidyar’s interest — or rather, lack of interest — in journalism is accurate, it is strange that he would also fund organizations — like the FPF, the Center for Public Integrity, and ProPublica — ostensibly dedicated to investigative journalism, transparency, and the First Amendment.

Omidyar’s supposed devotion is also hard to square with the fact that he and PayPal were a major part of the financial blockade against WikiLeaks, which – as mentioned above – deprived WikiLeaks of 95% of its revenue at the time. Though Omidyar –- and now the FPF -– have argued that the blockade has long been lifted, WikiLeaks has publicly disagreed, maintaining that it remains in effect. Interestingly, when Omidyar was asserting that the blockade had ended, the FPF – at the time – had also publicly disagreed with his assessment and claimed that the blockade was still in full effect.

Omidyar has also, in the past, been rather candid about his views on leakers. He asserted in 2009 that organizations that publish stolen — or leaked — information “should help catch the thief” and shouldn’t publish such information in the first place. Omidyar even defended this view after The Intercept’s founding and refused to speak in “absolutes” about whether or not a source should be turned in — a troubling perspective to have in light of The Intercept’s debacle in the Reality Winner case.

@loic I said ystrdy: @techcrunch and anybody else who pubs stolen info should help catch the thief. Shldnt pub in the 1st place.

What then caused him to create The Intercept, only a few years after making that assertion? Given Omidyar’s connections to the U.S. government, particularly the NSA, and top government contractors, including Snowden’s former employer, it was likely an effort to privatize and thus thwart or slow the publication of the Snowden leaks in which PayPal is allegedly implicated — and not a sudden change of heart.

Edmonds went a step further, stating that:

The Intercept is a continuation of that blockade [of WikiLeaks]. [It] was set up with that purpose. Specifically, it was set up to block true, real information and put forth narrative that has already gotten the approval of special interests including the U.S. government. It made perfect sense for him [Omidyar] to move from that to setting up a news organization and posing as an outlet for investigative reports depending on whistleblowers.”

The fine line between curation and censorship

Omidyar’s view on leaks and leakers seem to have influenced the opinions of some of the FPF’s most prominent members. For instance, Glenn Greenwald, following the publication of the Podesta emails, suggested in a conversation with Naomi Klein that the Podesta emails should have been “curated” prior to their release in order to prevent the outing of potentially sensitive personal information. Specifically, Greenwald stated: “I think WikiLeaks more or less at this point stands alone in believing that these kinds of dumps are ethically — never mind journalistically — just ethically, as a human being, justifiable.”

Listen to Greenwald’s conversation with Naomi Klein

The idea of “curation” in the publication of leaked documents is quizzical. Though one’s privacy is important, it is highly problematic to leave to one person the ability to decide what is and what isn’t in the public interest. “Curating” leaks gives those who are in possession of the leaked documents the power to decide what the public sees and doesn’t see instead of giving the public the right to decide what is relevant. In many cases, finding a “balance point” would present a challenge to even the most ethical and disinterested curator. Such power can easily be abused and used to shield key information contained in leaks or to hide crucial context.

For example, in the case of Chelsea Manning, Wired journalist Kevin Poulsen published parts of the chat logs between Manning and former hacker Adrian Lamo in which Manning allegedly admitted having given the leaked documents to WikiLeaks. However, Poulsen published only a quarter of the correspondence, claiming that he had not released the remainder as it contained “personal information” and “national security secrets” — concerns that were also raised upon the release of the DNC and Podesta emails.

Yet, the information Poulsen chose not to publish contained crucial context that showed that Manning leaked the documents to instigate reforms and inform the public – not to “cripple the United States’ foreign relations for the foreseeable future,” as Lamo had suggested in interviews before the chat logs’ full release. Ironically, it was Glenn Greenwald who publicly skewered Poulsen for journalistic malice.

However, Poulsen was merely “curating” the logs as he saw fit – albeit with the agenda of protecting Adrian Lamo, his long-time associate. Three years later, Greenwald found himself in a position similar to that of Poulsen when he came into possession of the Snowden leaks and became the “curator” of this collection. Now, nearly four years after receiving the cache, less than 2 percent of the estimated 58,000 files have been made public. If the releases continue at this snail’s pace, most of those reading this article will have been dead long before the Snowden cache is made fully public.

Perhaps this is why Greenwald, despite possessing hundreds of thousands of secret government documents he received from Snowden, has been able to travel to and from the United States without issue. Edmonds pointed this out, stating that “after Greenwald worked with so many whistleblowers and even though he has technically ‘aided and abetted’ this supposed illegal, major leak, he’s not touched. He can come and go [from the United States] as he pleases.” Meanwhile, Julian Assange has remained arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years, unable to leave.

Also troubling is that Snowden – the man who ostensibly risked his life and freedom to make this information public – has offered no complaints concerning the glacial pace of the documents’ release, nor about Omidyar essentially taking ownership of the leaks through The Intercept.

Former NSA Intelligence Analyst and Capabilities Operations Officer Russell Tice once said the following regarding The Intercept and its possession of the Snowden leaks:

I would be outraged and highly vocal if I were in Edward Snowden’s shoes. For a journalist whom I had placed my trust in to go and withhold documents meant for the public?! For the journalist to make fortune and fame based on my sacrifices and disclosure?! Forming a lucrative business partnership with entities who have direct conflicts of interest?! No. That wouldn’t have been acceptable.”

It’s possible that Snowden himself may approve of what has amounted to the censoring of these leaks, as he has also called for the “curation” of leaked material following the release of the Podesta emails. Unsurprisingly, this drew a sharp response from WikiLeaks.

Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.

While Edmonds has made the case that Omidyar likely founded The Intercept to clamp down on the Snowden leaks before they could cause further damage to the U.S. government — or to his own business — another motivating factor could well have been a desire to surreptitiously continue his blockade against WikiLeaks, but by different and more easily concealed means.

Omidyar certainly isn’t the only PayPal linked billionaire involved in such efforts to undermine and discredit WikiLeaks. As Part II of this investigative series will show, Peter Thiel — a PayPal co-founder with close ties to the Trump administration — has also been involved in the creation of an “attack plan” that seeks to undermine WikiLeaks through a media disinformation campaign and by working to turn WikiLeaks’ former allies against it. Given the FPF’s recent decision and the attacks levied against WikiLeaks by Intercept writers, this plan seems to be well underway.

Correction: a previous version of this article stated that Pierre Omidyar is a co-founder of PayPal. While he did not found PayPal, he acquired it when eBay bought PayPal in 2002.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News. She has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, and 21st Century Wire among others. She currently resides in Southern Chile.

Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.

The Palantir document notes that most well-known journalistic professionals “with a liberal bent . . .if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause, such is the mentality of most business professionals.”

WikiLeaks, the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now the fight to silence WikiLeaks is not only being waged by powerful government figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers.

As Part I of this investigative series revealed, Pierre Omidyar – eBay billionaire and PayPal’s long-time owner – holds considerable sway over several journalists and organizations that once championed WikiLeaks but now work for the Omidyar-owned publication, The Intercept. Thanks to his deep ties to the U.S. government and his own long-standing efforts to undermine the organization, Omidyar is using his influence to bring renewed pressure to WikiLeaks as it continues to publish sensitive government information. However, Pierre Omidyar is not the only PayPal-linked billionaire with strong government connections and a dislike for WikiLeaks.

Peter Thiel, who once compared writers at Gawker to Al Qaeda after they wrote about his sexuality, is a close confidant of Donald Trump — who, as president, continues to crack down on whistleblowers (even denying them bail) and whose administration has named arresting WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange a top priority.

Thiel is a perfect companion for the Trump administration in this regard — having, through his management of a top government technology contractor, overseen the creation of a “pre-crime” algorithm that targets would-be whistleblowers. Not only that, but that very contractor once created a plan challenging “the WikiLeaks threat,” a plan that displays some frightening similarities to current efforts to silence or discredit the organization and its famous editor.

Thiel, after Trump’s inauguration, was nearly appointed chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, until Thiel withdrew his name. Several of Thiel’s top aides and associates have been given high-profile positions, including important positions on the National Security Council.

However, Thiel’s strongest relationship to the government comes not from his Trump White House ties, but from his being chairman of the government contractor Palantir Technologies, a company Fortune called “one of Silicon Valley’s biggest, most secretive software startups.”

Palantir began at PayPal as an antifraud algorithm that detected “unusual account activity.” However, following September 11, PayPal co-founder Thiel theorized it could be used to look for “terrorists.” He, along with his long-time associate Alex Karp, decided to name their offshoot company, which was based around the algorithm, after the all-seeing crystal from The Lord of the Rings. It was launched in 2004, two years after PayPal was acquired by eBay’s Pierre Omidyar.

Upon launching, Palantir was largely funded by Thiel himself as well as by In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA – an agency also connected to Pierre Omidyar. Since its founding, Thiel has long had a hand in how Palantir is run and currently serves as its chairman. As of 2015, PayPal employees still composed 80 percent of Palantir’s management team.

Palantir and its connections

While Palantir Technologies has many high-profile clients, including some of Wall Street’s largest banks, its most important customer is the U.S. government. Palantir has benefited greatly from government contracts over the last decade, raking in more than $419 million between fiscal year 2007 and fiscal year 2016 from a total of 121 contracts. In recent years, its profits from government work have grown substantially, to over $132 million in government contracts during fiscal year 2016.

The main government agencies that have contracted – and continue to contract – with Palantir are the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense. Its intelligence arm, called Palantir Government, is also used by the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and the Pentagon to “uncover terrorist networks,” fraudsters and “subversives.” Its track record for government work has long been celebrated by key officials in the Trump administration — including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, current National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, and current Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

Though Palantir has largely been hailed in the press for helping track down white-collar criminals like Bernie Madoff and aiding U.S. troops in tracking insurgents in occupied Iraq, it also has another less-publicized use that is of utmost interest to the U.S. government: preventing the leaking of classified information and silencing whistleblowers. By 2012, Palantir had developed a means of indexing information accessed by its software and had created “an audit trail of what the Palantir users were reading, whether they’d handled the information properly and whether they’d modified it in any way.”

Not only that, but – in recent years – Palantir has allowed the Orwellian concept of “pre-crime” to be put into practice. It tracks people the government suspects may commit crimes, including suspected “subversives.” Essentially, Palantir not only enables the government to catch leakers; by recording if classified information was improperly handled and by whom; it also predicts which government employees are most likely to blow the whistle, before it even happens.

The Palantir Plan

It’s no surprise that Palantir has developed capabilities that allow it to thwart the leak of government information to organizations like WikiLeaks by tracking – and predicting – the actions of potentially disgruntled government employees, soldiers and contractors. In 2010, the U.S. government was left reeling following WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq War logs and other documents allegedly leaked by Chelsea Manning. Already a top government contractor at the time, Palantir, along with two other top technology companies contracted by the government — HBGary Federal and Berico Technologies – was tasked with developing a plan not only to silence WikiLeaks but to destroy it completely.

The resulting plan of attack devised by three firms, titled “The WikiLeaks Threat,” was made public in 2011 after hackers associated with Anonymous targeted HBGary and gained access to scores of emails sent between HBGary, Berico and Palantir. It seeks mainly to take advantage of existing fractures within the community of WikiLeaks and its supporters through an elaborate media disinformation campaign. The leaked correspondence among the three contractors showed that the plan was meant to target WikiLeaks’ “global following and volunteer staff” as well as its donor group.

Read | “The WikiLeaks Threat”

Download the PDF file .

The plan is based largely on what the firms identified as WikiLeaks’ three biggest weaknesses and how those weaknesses could be “capitalized on.” The first weakness mentioned is “financial” and references the financial blockade against WikiLeaks that began in 2010. HBGary’s CEO at the time, Aaron Barr, had also mentioned, in the leaked correspondence relating to the document, that it was important to “get people to understand that if they support the organization we will come after them. Transaction records are easily available.” In other words, Barr asserted that those individuals donating to WikiLeaks should also be targeted.

The next weakness noted regards “security.” Though it doesn’t reference any existing security problem, the document calls for the “need to create doubt about their security and increase awareness that interaction with WikiLeaks will expose you.” The latter was also part of an anti-WikiLeaks strategy laid out in a U.S. Army report.

The final weakness noted in the document targets the “mission” of WikiLeaks. It notes that “there is a fracture among the followers because of a belief that Julien [sic] is going astray from the cause and has selected his own mission of attacking the U.S.” The document later notes that this fracture should be exploited by working to “feed the fuel between the feuding groups” by using “disinformation” and by creating “messages around [WikiLeaks] actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization.” A “media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities” is also cited.

Most interesting of all, perhaps, is the attention the document gives to one individual in particular: journalist and the shining star of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald. The document notes that Greenwald was critical in moving WikiLeaks’ U.S.-based server to a French one following the release of the Manning leaks, stating specifically that “it is this level of support that needs to be disrupted.” This statement refers more broadly to well-known journalistic professionals with “a liberal bent.” The document further notes that most of these professionals “if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause, such is the mentality of most business professionals.”

The document concludes that “without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold.”

Executing the Plan

Though Palantir’s CEO at the time of the document’s release, Alex Karp, apologized for the company’s role in devising a plan to neuter WikiLeaks and spoke haughtily of the organization’s right to free speech, events that have taken place in the years since it’s release suggest this plan was never taken off the table, as Karp seemed to imply, and is currently in effect.

For instance, the plan to exploit WikiLeaks’ “security” weakness mentioned in the document was made manifest through the Obama administration’s persecution (now continued by Trump) of whistleblowers. This crackdown – for the first time – saw legitimate whistleblowers, such as Jeffrey Sterling and John Kiriakou, imprisoned in order to make examples of them. In both of those cases, Sterling and Kiriakou were convicted after allegedly revealing classified information to journalists — James Risen and Matthew Cole, respectively. Risen and Cole are both currently employed by Pierre Omidyar’s The Intercept.

Of course, the longest and harshest prison sentence was reserved for Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks’ most well-known source, who was originally sentenced to 35 years in prison for the leaks until her sentence was commuted during Obama’s final days as president. Palantir has, as previously mentioned, contributed by helping the government track suspected and potential whistleblowers within the ranks of its employees, increasing the likelihood that anyone who tries to come forward with sensitive or classified information will be exposed and suffer major legal consequences.

There is also evidence that the “financial” weakness of WikiLeaks is again being exploited as the organization finds itself under increased pressure in response to its recent, controversial releases.

As mentioned in Part I of this series, the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) — funded by Omidyar and with many of its directors on The Intercept’s payroll — voted unanimously to stop receiving donations on behalf of WikiLeaks in December, even though it had been set up primarily to help WikiLeaks circumvent the blockade that Omidyar and others oversaw. Even though Omidyar had publicly stated in 2013 that the PayPal blockade was no longer in effect, the FPF had admitted at that time that, despite Omidyar’s statement, the blockade continued. Though the situation between PayPal and WikiLeaks has remained largely unchanged since that year, the FPF’s position on the matter has changed drastically in recent months. Wikileaks has interpreted the FPF’s new position essentially denying the existence of the blockade as proof that the organization has kowtowed to political pressure.

Given what is referenced in the Palantir document and the associated leaked correspondence, there is substantial evidence suggesting that this is the newest iteration of the blockade against WikiLeaks — targeting donations made specifically from within the U.S., which also happens to be WikiLeaks’ largest donor base.

Also of interest is the Palantir document’s seemingly prophetic reference to Glenn Greenwald. Upon joining The Intercept in 2013, Greenwald relegated the rights over the Snowden cache to Omidyar — essentially privatizing them after a billionaire with government connections galore made him a very lucrative offer.

Greenwald has described Omidyar’s offer as “a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity [that] would be impossible for any journalist, let alone me, to decline.” This is a strong indication that Greenwald was presented with the choice of “professional preservation over cause” and, as Palantir predicted, chose to follow the former. It is possible that Omidyar’s influence over the FPF and The Intercept may have persuaded other FPF members with a “liberal bent” to do the same.

Furthermore, while Greenwald still voices support for WikiLeaks and Assange to some degree on Twitter — mainly regarding Assange’s arbitrary detention — he has failed to comment on the FPF vote, of which he was part, as well as the virulent attacks against WikiLeaks leveled by some of his fellow FPF directors and fellow Intercept writers. Though his silence may seem unsurprising to some, given his and the FPF’s connections to Omidyar, it has been suggested that his silence may have struck a nerve with Assange.

In the wake of the 2016 election: exploiting the “mission” weakness

More telling than anything else, however, is why the FPF chose to move forward with this decision. Among those members of the FPF who have spoken up against WikiLeaks in recent months — each of them has pointed to the concern that WikiLeaks and Assange have “gone astray” from WikiLeaks’ original mission, rejecting its commitment to nonpartisanship and intentionally aiding the Trump campaign in the 2016 election — thus making the organization and Assange responsible for Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

Those FPF members that do not share these views have remained silent, despite the fact that many of them have vocally defended WikiLeaks in the past.

This is remarkably in keeping with the Palantir document’s cited “mission” weakness. While the document — written in 2010 — said that some disgruntled WikiLeaks supporters felt that Assange’s alleged target was the United States government, the same “fracture” has arisen with accusations that Assange was unfairly singling out Hillary Clinton. In both cases, Assange and WikiLeaks’ goal was to expose the crimes of both the U.S. government and, later, Hillary Clinton — not to slander either with false information.

Now, those accusing WikiLeaks of everything from Russian collusion to secretly plotting with the Trump campaign are being exploited by a massive “media campaign” built on “disinformation.” Just as the Palantir document suggests, this media campaign is working to “feed the fuel between feuding groups [i.e. those who accuse WikiLeaks of anti-Hillary partisanship and those who do not].”

As will be revealed in Part III of this series, one writer in particular — Kevin Poulsen — has been instrumental in this recent, post-election media campaign to discredit WikiLeaks. Yet, Poulsen’s history shows he is no friend to whistleblowers or WikiLeaks. Not only was Poulsen responsible for causing massive damage to the reputation and defense of Chelsea Manning prior to her trial, he also shares a direct connection to the FPF — and a shady connection to the U.S. government. More troubling still, he — after two mysterious suicides — is the only surviving member of the group that created SecureDrop, the app which — after being promoted by the FPF and The Intercept — is now widely used by top media outlets for “secret” communication between would-be whistleblowers and big-name journalists. Could Poulsen’s troubled past with WikiLeaks and its sources endanger SecureDrop’s goal of protecting whistleblowers?

Top Photo | Peter Thiel looks over the podium before the start of the second day session of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 19, 2016. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News. She has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, and 21st Century Wire among others. She currently resides in Southern Chile.

Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.

A concerted effort is being put forth to discredit Wikileaks and its founder as a reliable option for whistleblowers. But as Whitney Webb reveals, the alternatives being put forth are leaving leakers vulnerable.

This report has been updated thanks to new revelations from the work of investigative journalist Yasha Levine and his research into the Tor project for his new book Surveillance Valley.

WikiLeaks, the transparency organization known for publishing leaked documents that threaten the powerful, finds itself under pressure like never before, as does its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. Now, the fight to silence Wikileaks is not only being waged by powerful government figures but also by the media, including outlets and organizations that have styled themselves as working to protect whistleblowers.

As Part I of this investigative series revealed, Pierre Omidyar – eBay billionaire and PayPal’s long-time owner – holds considerable sway over several journalists and organizations, like the Freedom of the Press Foundation, that once championed WikiLeaks but now work for organizations or publications funded by Omidyar. Thanks to his deep ties to the U.S. government and his own long-standing efforts to undermine the organization, Omidyar is using his influence to bring renewed pressure to WikiLeaks as it continues to publish sensitive government information.

In Part II of this investigative series, the role of Palantir — the “secretive” PayPal offshoot turned government contractor — in the war against whistleblowers was examined. Particular attention was given to Palantir’s targeting of would-be government whistleblowers and other “subversives,” as well as its plan to deal with “the WikiLeaks threat” by turning former defenders of the organization against it. Central to this plan was a media campaign intended to discredit WikiLeaks, particularly Assange, and to capitalize on “fractures” among those who supported WikiLeaks in order to raise doubts over the group’s commitment to non-partisanship.

One such writer doing just that also happens to be connected to the Freedom of the Press Foundation and has a dubious track record of reporting on WikiLeaks and whistleblowers. His name is Kevin Poulsen.

MINNEAPOLIS – When the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was debating whether to end its processing of WikiLeaks donations (see Part I of this series), the news was made public in an exclusive article in the Daily Beast, written by Kevin Poulsen and Spencer Ackerman. The article is jarring for several reasons, primarily owing to the terms in which it speaks of both WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange, as well as its one-sided slant and promotion of false claims.

The article asserts, for instance, that the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s decision to stop accepting U.S. donations on behalf of WikiLeaks was motivated by Assange’s “embrace of Trump,” claims echoed by FPF members like Micah Lee. However, Assange never embraced Trump and the article’s proof of his alleged partisanship is that WikiLeaks published information that was damaging to Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton.

This, of course, ignores the fact that supporting neither Trump nor Clinton is possible, as publishing information damaging to one does not necessarily indicate support for the other. In fact, WikiLeaks publicly encouraged anyone with access to leak Trump’s tax returns and also stated on Twitter that “Trump’s breach of promise over the release of his tax returns is even more gratuitous than Clinton concealing her Goldman Sachs transcripts.”

That accusation forms the ideological basis for some of the more shocking statements that follow. In the article, Assange and WikiLeaks are accused of “echoing Nazi publications” and capitalizing on Trump supporters because it was “good for WikiLeaks’ bank account.” It also downplays Assange’s well-founded fear of U.S. extradition; revives unsubstantiated claims that Assange is guilty of rape; and, in regards to his asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy, asserts that Assange chose to play the victim and “portray himself as a political prisoner.” The article does not mention that the UN has found Assange to be a victim of arbitrary detention and that prominent journalists, such as John Pilger, have called him a political refugee.

Many of those quoted in the article have well-known personal vendettas against Assange — such as Guardian reporter James Ball, who was quoted in the article as calling Assange “someone who’s in it for himself” and “a sad man in a broom cupboard.” It also quotes billionaire Intercept backer Pierre Omidyar — whose distaste for WikiLeaks and connections to the U.S. government were exposed in Part I — and supports his claim that WikiLeaks should be not be considered a “media organization.”

The tone of the article, as well as its slanted reporting in regards to WikiLeaks, have become common in mainstream reporting. This is especially true at the Daily Beast, where this article was written, as its parent company, IAC, counts Chelsea Clinton among its directors and some of its senior editors were outed by the Podesta emails as journalists who actively colluded with the Clinton campaign.

Like other articles recently written on WikiLeaks and Assange — this one echoes a plan drafted by Palantir and other U.S. government contractors to confront the “WikiLeaks threat” (see Part II). The plan includes pushing “the reckless and radical nature of WikiLeaks” through a coordinated media campaign. It also includes spreading “disinformation” by creating “messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization [WikiLeaks],” and “feeding the fuel” between factions of WikiLeaks supporters, by exploiting the fact that some see Assange as “going astray from the cause” and playing partisan politics.

Beyond the inherent bias of the Daily Beast, the authors of the article disclose their own conflicts of interest within the report, which mentions that Spencer Ackerman works at the Guardian and has collaborated in the past with James Ball as well as Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald and “Citizenfour” filmmaker Laura Poitras. Kevin Poulsen, it notes, once sat on the FPF’s technical advisory panel and helped to co-develop the SecureDrop project, which the FPF promotes and manages.

Poulsen’s conflicts of interest don’t stop there. What the article’s disclaimer fails to mention is that Poulsen also has a very strong personal dislike for Assange and WikiLeaks. As Assange wrote in an email to Trevor Timm regarding the FPF’s decision to end processing WikiLeaks donations, Poulsen was “a key actor in the imprisonment of Chelsea Manning,” and also “manipulated the alleged Manning-Assange chat logs in an attempt to frame WikiLeaks.”

Assange also noted that Poulsen has collaborated with Micah Lee, who initiated the FPF’s decision regarding WikiLeaks, has publicly slandered Assange on social media and is the author of a recent smear against him and WikiLeaks in The Intercept, where he works as a technologist and writer.

Yet what Assange noted in his correspondence with Timm is just a small part of Poulsen’s troubling past.

Poulsen’s role in the Chelsea Manning affair

As Assange noted in his emailed response to Timm, Poulsen’s feud with the Wikileaks founder dates back to 2010, when Poulsen wrote a story for Wired using private chat logs between Chelsea Manning and the man who exposed her as a leaker and ultimately helped send her to prison, Adrian Lamo. The story named Manning as the source before her arrest had been made public and Poulsen’s ethics on drafting the piece were widely criticized — particularly by Julian Assange, as well as Glenn Greenwald, who was then writing for Salon.

As Greenwald noted at the time, Poulsen published only a fraction of the chat logs between Manning and Lamo, acknowledging that he withheld other parts of the logs. In an email exchange with Greenwald, Poulsen stated that the withheld logs were “either Manning discussing personal matters that aren’t clearly related to his [sic] arrest, or apparently sensitive government information that I’m not throwing up without vetting first.” Yet, when the full logs were released over a year later, the assertion proved dishonest at best.

Poulsen’s selective disclosure was significant as it allowed Lamo to create a misleading portrait of Chelsea Manning. Greenwald wrote at the time that prior to the log’s full release, and in the lead-up to Manning’s trial, Lamo “incoherently invoked a slew of trite, right-wing justifications, denouncing Manning as a ‘traitor’ and ‘spy,’ while darkly insinuating that Manning provided classified information to a so-called ‘foreign national,’ meaning WikiLeaks’ Assange.” In other words, Lamo used the highly edited chat logs published by Wired to essentially defame Chelsea Manning prior to her trial, painting her as a threat to national security while the full logs revealed that she was seeking to inform the public of government wrongdoing — the very definition of a whistleblower.

Equally significant was that the failure to release the full logs allowed Lamo to claim – falsely – that Assange had convinced Manning to leak the documents, essentially making him an accomplice. At the time, the U.S. Department of Justice was attempting to prosecute WikiLeaks based on the claim that Assange “encouraged or even helped” Manning extract classified information. However, the full chat logs, once they were finally made public, showed this was in no way what transpired between Manning and Assange.

In an article for Salon, Greenwald also noted that Poulsen had a long, storied past with Lamo. Lamo – who now allegedly works for the CIA – had long used Poulsen as “his personal media voice,” as Poulsen, like Lamo, was also a hacker who was convicted of serious hacking felonies prior to becoming a journalist. Poulsen wrote numerous articles about Lamo and cited him in others, a connection that went far beyond that of a simple relationship between journalist and source. By concealing portions of the chat logs for so long, Poulsen left Lamo as the only source of information regarding the full contents of the of the logs. Lamo then used this power to fuel his documented desire for media attention at Manning’s expense. Greenwald called it a “journalistic disgrace.”

WikiLeaks was even more critical in its assessment than Greenwald, going so far as to insinuate that Poulsen was a government informant — a claim Poulsen has fiercely denied. Yet, an examination of Poulsen’s past makes the suggestion not unreasonable. Prior to his arrest for hacking-related felonies in 1994, Poulsen worked with the U.S. government. According to a 1993 article in the Los Angeles Times, “So good was Poulsen at cracking clandestine government and military systems that the defense industry anointed him with a security clearance and brought him inside to test its own security.”

Then, as Greenwald noted in Salon, Poulsen “was allowed by the U.S. Government [after his release from prison] to become a journalist covering the hacking world for Security Focus News,” where he worked prior to Wired. While at Security Focus, Poulsen worked with Mark Rasch, who had criminally investigated Poulsen as chief of the DOJ’s Computer Crimes Unit. Rasch, at the time of Manning’s arrest, was also a regular contributor to Wired, where Poulsen still works and was the very person who put Lamo in touch with the FBI in order to out Manning. This, along with the fact that one in four U.S. hackers are, or become government informers, makes WikiLeaks’ admittedly speculative claim of Poulsen’s collusion with the government in the Manning case nonetheless feasible.

Poulsen, of course, remembers things differently. In an article published in January 2017 at the Daily Beast, Poulsen maintained that he withheld portions of the chat logs because “Manning had told Lamo all about her struggles with gender dysphoria, and those personal disclosures were out of bounds. By her own account, her leaks were impelled by her moral compass and nothing else.” Poulsen failed to mention he had withheld portions of the chat logs which showed the Manning had, in fact, been motivated by morality and not to “aid the enemy”, as Lamo had claimed while the logs were in Poulsen’s possession, but not yet released to the public.

Poulsen’s recent article recounting the Manning case paints Assange as a villain, but the chat logs reveal the care Assange took to protect Manning as a source. He accuses Assange of “attacking me [Poulsen] directly” for the initial report on Manning and insinuates that it was wrong for Assange to initially deny that he knew Manning was the source of the Collateral Murder video as well as numerous diplomatic cables. Poulsen goes on to opine that “the WikiLeaks that Manning knew has all but vanished,” citing Assange’s alleged partisanship in the 2016 presidential election – a recurrent theme in much of Poulsen’s reporting on the subject.

SecureDrop survivor

Given Poulsen’s dubious track record regarding reporting on whistleblowers and WikiLeaks, his work developing an application to protect whistleblowers, known as SecureDrop, may seem odd. Initially known as “DeadDrop,” SecureDrop is an open-source system that provides for secure communication between whistleblowers/leakers and journalists, allowing the former to increase the chances of preserving their anonymity through the use of the Tor network. SecureDrop was co-authored by three individuals: famed internet activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz, James Dolan, and Kevin Poulsen. It was given to the FPF to promote and maintain in 2013, several months after Aaron Swartz took his own life after having been hounded by the U.S. government.

With the death of James Dolan in December 2017, Poulsen became the only still-breathing developer of SecureDrop, causing the system to become the subject of conspiracy theories. The nature of Dolan’s death fueled these theories Like Swartz, Dolan was said to have committed suicide. An FPF press release announcing his death cited PTSD as a likely impetus for the tragedy. Even mainstream news outlets noted the “eerie” similarities between Dolan’s suicide and that of Swartz, as both were said to have committed suicide by hanging in Brooklyn, New York.

Dolan’s reason for being in Brooklyn is still unclear, as he was living in San Diego at the time, and was found dead in a hotel. Some circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown, such as who he was last seen with, whether he wrote a suicide note, and who he was visiting, though – having died soon after Christmas – it is feasible that he was in New York to visit family. The lack of information regarding the circumstances of Dolan’s passing has allowed conspiracy theories inferring foul play to thrive.

These events, coupled with Poulsen’s problematic reporting regarding WikiLeaks and its sources, have led some to speculate that SecureDrop may not be as secure as its name suggests.

Philip Winter, a researcher at Princeton University and a volunteer developer of the Tor network, asserts this isn’t the case. In an interview with MintPress News, Winter stated:

[It is] very unlikely that [Poulsen’s] involvement in the early days could affect the security of the program the way it is now. … It is free software and this means that the code is out there for everyone to inspect and verify and run themselves. A lot of people have done that and they have even paid professionals to look at the code. … That’s to make sure that there aren’t any backdoors or things like that.”

While Winter considers SecureDrop “among the best” of the existing whistleblower platforms, he cautioned that “one really has to consider that [using SecureDrop] by itself doesn’t mean you will be safe no matter what.” Winter pointed to the metadata that may be present in documents, such as those originating on government servers, that could unintentionally identify a source, as well as other document markers such as watermarks which can be difficult to remove. “SecureDrop does a really good job at what it can do for you,” Winter added, “but it’s really important for potential leakers to know what it cannot do for you and it should not be seen as a silver bullet.”

Tor’s Connections to the US Government

Recently new doubts have been raised regarding – not necessarily the credibility of SecureDrop – but the Tor project upon which SecureDrop is based. Winter told MintPressNews that Tor, like SecureDrop, has a “reputation problem” because it was initially funded by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, but that the project’s past was no reason for concern. However, while conducting researching for his recently released book Surveillance Valley, investigative journalist Yasha Levine found that the U.S. government’s involvement in the Tor project continues well into the present with truly unsettling consequences.

Levine recently detailed new, troubling information about the Tor project which he obtained after combing through thousands of pages of documents he received through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests. The documents detail communications between Tor and the CIA spin-off the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which provides the project with much of its funding.

Levine had previously revealed that Tor was a U.S. military contractor with its own government contractor number, effectively making it an extension of the very apparatus that it claims to protect its users from. Indeed, Tor has long been promoted as the only means of protecting oneself from NSA intrusion online. Yet, Tor’s funding is the least of the problems it poses to the online security of its users.

For instance, the FOIA documents, which have recently been released to the public, reveal that Tor privately “tipped off” the federal government when finding security vulnerabilities well before the public was made aware of them – giving the government plenty of time to exploit the flaws to their benefit. One of those vulnerabilities “made Tor traffic stand out from all the rest and made it easy to fingerprint and single out people who were using Tor from the background data noise of the internet.” That vulnerability was known to the government in 2007 but was not made known to the public by 2011, over four years later.

Another troubling finding in the releases are documents detailing Tor co-founder Roger Dingledine’s work with USAID, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the National Security staff at the White House and other government agencies to come up with “pro-Tor talking points.” This type of communication between government agencies and the top echelon of Tor employees and promoters suggests a potentially sinister level of cooperation that undermines Tor’s ostensible commitment to keeping its users anonymous.

No biggie, just Tor anti-state radical Roger Dingledine working with the State Dept and BBG to come up with pro-Tor talking points. Did someone say something about the White House and USAID, too?

Such concerns are also heightened by the fact that Tor’s “exit nodes,” where traffic leaves the secure “onion” protocol and is decrypted, can be established by anyone, including government agencies – likely making Tor’s anonymity feature ineffective given Tor’s on-going cooperation with the government. Indeed, as Tor researcher turned hacker Dan Egerstad revealed in 2007, governments have been funding high bandwidth Tor exit nodes for just that purpose.

These new revelations about Tor have taken many by surprise, including WikiLeaks and Assange who had previously promoted the project. However, Assange recently tweeted a link to the FOIA request database compiled by Levine, suggesting that his promotion of the online tool is a thing of the past.

The implications of Tor’s vulnerabilities and cooperation with the government have startling implications for whistleblowers and SecureDrop users. Much of the SecureDrops’ security is based on Tor. If Tor is cooperating with the government and if the government is, therefore, able to surveil Tor users, government agencies could easily identify a source attempting to remain anonymous when sending leaked documents via SecureDrop to a news outlet.

This is likely already happening. As FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds told MintPressNews in an earlier interview, former NSA employees had relayed to her the federal government’s interest in seeking out potential whistleblower communications from the internet. Though Edmonds was not aware of the technical means in which that was accomplished, Levine’s research points to Tor as a likely culprit.

The greater game of siphoning sensitive public-interest information

SecureDrop’s reputation and open source code has allowed the FPF to widely promote the platform, leading to its adoption by a variety of media organizations, despite the security flaws hidden within Tor. Yet, while SecureDrop is being promoted as a way to help sources anonymously share their leaks with the public, many of the organizations that FPF heavily advertises as SecureDrop users have a history of failing to publish documents they received from whistleblowers or refusing to even receive documents from whistleblowers.

Chelsea Manning, for example, attempted to leak documents to both The Washington Post and The New York Times – both of which have since adopted SecureDrop, Manning was rejected by both. In the years since the Post has called for the arrest of Edward Snowden and has written smears against alleged whistleblower Reality Winner.

ProPublica, another SecureDrop user, recently received leaks which it declined to release in full, leading Assange to sayProPublica had “ruined” a potentially powerful data set through its “censorious” journalism.

A potentially powerful dataset of 250,000 private messages from US neo-nazi group Atomwaffen almost entirely ruined by ProPublica’s censorious nanny-journalism. Release the full dataset so anthropologists and everyone else can get to work, ProPublica. https://t.co/WEtxE4s8e6

The Post, ProPublica and the Times also possess large portions of the Snowden cache, as does the Guardian – also a SecureDrop adopter. Yet, as Glenn Greenwald recently noted, all of these organizations stopped reporting on them years ago, keeping their portion of the archives conveniently concealed. Thus, any documents leaked to these outlets have no guarantee of being released to the public in any meaningful capacity, especially if those documents contain information that conflict with official narratives.

The failure of those organizations to report on the Snowden documents leave The Intercept as the only outlet in possession of the full Snowden cache that still actively reports on it. However, as noted in Part I, the Intercept’s reporting on and release of the Snowden docs have only led to a small fraction of these documents being made public, and the vast majority of the documents – five years on – have yet to be disclosed.

The Intercept, which heavily advertises its use of SecureDrop, has recently come under criticism for its role in the outing of alleged leaker Reality Winner, who is believed to have leaked documents from the NSA to the publication. Though Winner did not use SecureDrop and instead mailed hard copies, Intercept technologists such as Micah Lee, as well as the journalist who sent the documents to the government for verification, failed to remove a hidden watermark, ultimately leading the government to identify Winner as the source of the leaks.

While the Intercept does promote Reality Winner’s case as well as the injustice of her lengthy pre-trial detention, they have never disciplined or even named the journalist responsible for outing her. Recent Intercept reports, including one authored by FPF co-founder Trevor Timm, fail to acknowledge the publication’s role in Winner’s arrest and have deflected responsibility. While disciplining the journalist would have likely secured the trust of future whistleblowers, not taking responsibility makes it is easier to promote the Intercept a haven for whistleblowers — an appeal often promoted by its staff.

The fact that news organizations like WaPo and NYTimes rejected Mannings leak is one of the reasons we started The Intercept

By promoting SecureDrop and the organizations that adopt it while simultaneously tearing down WikiLeaks and its most visible member, a narrative is being put forth that WikiLeaks is bad for whistleblowers, and that leaking to mainstream and pseudo-independent media organizations that use SecureDrop is preferable. Indeed, when SecureDrop was first launched at the New Yorker under the name StrongBox, it was specifically touted as a WikiLeaks replacement. But the continuing cooperation between the Tor project and the U.S. government means that his WikiLeaks “replacement” could be endangering the safety of would-be whistleblowers. WikiLeaks, in contrast, has famously gone to great lengths to protect its sources and has been largely successful in doing so.

Pierre Omidyar, the Intercept’s billionaire backer whose connections to the U.S. government are noted in length in Part I of this series, recently asserted that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and therefore “stands to lose First Amendment protection for what they publish.” Omidyar’s statements echo those made by CIA chief Mike Pompeo, who similarly asserted that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Assange has no First Amendment protections.

A more practical concern is this evidence may cause Wikileaks to lose First Amendment protection for what they publish. https://t.co/jtqdtJ2bTW

“Good Monday” Jeff Sessions said “Assange’s arrest is a priority,” while Mike Pompeo also claimed “Assange has no First Amendment rights” and that “the CIA is working to take down WikiLeaks. US government official said federal prosecutors are still pursuing a criminal charges

Why would a billionaire who claimed a great need for fearless, adversarial journalism when he helped create the Intercept, call so quickly for the removal of First Amendment protections from a media organization like WikiLeaks? The attacks in the media targeting WikiLeaks are meant to paint it as disreputable by turning its former allies and by painting it as partisan – the very plan laid out in the leaked document authored by Palantir years ago and discussed in Part II.

By attacking the credibility of WikiLeaks and promoting mainstream and pseudo-independent media organizations using SecureDrop as a replacement, Omidyar-funded organizations like The Intercept and the FPF are helping to funnel would-be whistleblowers into the arms of news outlets with dubious track records when it comes to their treatment of leaks and leakers. Worse still, SecureDrop itself is based on Tor, whose much-touted security has been effectively undermined the U.S. government which originally helped to create it. We must ask what the motives are for these apparent efforts to redirect whistleblowers and siphon their sensitive information, vital to the public interest, into potential traps and cul-de-sacs where they may never see the light of day.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, and 21st Century Wire among others. She currently lives in Southern Chile.

Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.